[mrazoun]

Hi all,
I found this very nice project.
Seem's to be exactly what I want to have - open, expandable, with possibility to connect sensors from different producers. And with possibility to modify source code.
My congratulation's to Werk_AG and other contributors.

Pls, can anybody give me aditional technical specs. Mainly which kind of inputs Tx unit have and how many, etc.
Also power consumption is interesting for me. I think that's not impossible to have roof Tx unit (wind measurement) powered by battery for years without solar charging.

I understand that some information can be available after ordering PCB's, but I need more information before I will decide to buy it.

Best regards and thank in advance.

[werk_ag]

Hello mrazoun,

Welcome and thank you for your interest in the WeatherDuino project and for your kind words too
Please give a look at the WeatherDuino Wiki, it may help to find answers to some of your questions.

The TX unit power consumption is around 120mA with some small peaks (if not used to also provide power to a fan for the Radiation Shield). Running it only from batteries without some kind of periodic recharge isn't practicable.

Current WeatherDuino code is published with GNU General Public License, so anyone can freely modify it as needed.

Regards
Werk_AG

[mrazoun]

Hello mrazoun,

Welcome and thank you for your interest in the WeatherDuino project and for your kind words too  
Please give a look at the WeatherDuino Wiki, it may help to find answers to some of your questions.

The TX unit power consumption is around 120mA with some small peaks (if not used to also provide power to a fan for the Radiation Shield). Running it only from batteries without some kind of periodic recharge isn't practicable.

Current WeatherDuino code is published with GNU General Public License, so anyone can freely modify it as needed.

Regards
Werk_AG

Hi Werk_AG,

thank's for your quick answer.
Do you think in the future about some low low Tx unit for roof measurement ? (wind, mayby sun and UV) Low Low power I mean average consumption about 200uAmps, 3V.
Is it possible to connect some produced outside units directly to Rx via RF ? Which types ? Mayby it can be my way..

Regards.

[werk_ag]

I'm afraid that with your power consumption requirements will be very difficult to have a transmitter unit with a good RF covering range, by other hand there many weather instruments such as some anemometers which require more power and higher voltages to operate.

Once WeatherDuino is designed to support the widest range of weather instruments as possible, develop a low low power transmitter isn't suitable for our goal. By other side, as we intend to continue using Arduinos is our systems, power consumption hardly will be so low.

[AllyCat]

Do you think in the future about some low low Tx unit for roof measurement ? (wind, mayby sun and UV) Low Low power I mean average consumption about 200uAmps, 3V.
Is it possible to connect some produced outside units directly to Rx via RF ?

Hi,

I believe that the main problem is that the "off the shelf" Arduino (Nano) is not at all designed for low power consumption. 

I have a long term aim to develop a much lower-power transmitter "compatible" with the Weatherduino receivers.  But this will need (or at least I plan to use) a different "micro-power" (PIC) controller which (AFAIK) is not compatible with the Arduino Development Environment.  Maybe not 200uA, but certainly less than 1 mA average, so compatible with power from a very small PV panel.

My first stage of the project will use the Auriol (duino) protocol (which is well documented) for Rain and/or Wind sensor(s).  Later, maybe add the protocol for Temperature and Humidity but unfortunately there does not appear to be a protocol for Solar UV and W/m2.  It might be possible to "invent" one, or the Solar support might have to wait for a later stage:

Ultimately, I would hope to support the "normal" Weatherduino protocol  (Radiohead)  but I am neither comfortable nor proficient with C(++) programming (yet). 

Cheers,  Alan.

[mrazoun]

Hi AllyCat,
thank's for your reply.
It's nice that Tx unit with low low consumption is also interesting for you. Another think is if that project want's to go by this way.
Mayby the second Tx unit, battery powered with easy instalation and easy maintenance ? Naturally compatible with Rx units.

Regards.

[engolling]

I have a long term aim to develop a much lower-power transmitter "compatible" with the Weatherduino receivers.  But this will need (or at least I plan to use) a different "micro-power" (PIC) controller which (AFAIK) is not compatible with the Arduino Development Environment.  Maybe not 200uA, but certainly less than 1 mA average, so compatible with power from a very small PV panel.

In principle it is no problem to develop a low power system based on a Atmel mcu like the Mega328, it also has sleep modes pushing the consumption down upto to a few µA.
But you will have to lower your thoughts…

- No nicely lighting LEDs consuming nearly as much power as the whole MCU.
- No voltage regulators - at least no linear ones - the MCU might be directly powered by a Li-Ion Battery (3-4,2V)
- No onboard UART to USB converter just a interface to connect it externally for flashing and debugging
- A reduced update rate that you will get a low duty cycle (you may miss a wind gust)

This might be interesting for some special applications but I think a weather station needs a fan and a heating (in the locations where temperatures can get below zero) making low power difficult .

Nevertheless if my stuff is all online and running properly I could imagine contributing to a low power TX board.

Regards,
engolling

[werk_ag]

As everyone I also like low power things! At this point I would like to give my point of view about this matter, and perhaps try to explain, why I haven't had, and still don't have any concerns about power consumption of the TX units.

Design a low power transmitter unit isn't hard, specially if at start you know which weather instruments will be used with it, which isn't the case with the WeatherDuino systems, mainly designed to allow the use of a wide range of weather instruments.
Ok, lets suppose that I will design a low power TX unit , then a user, per example,  wants to use the Inspeed Vortex Digital anemometer, then what I say to him? Use a secondary power supply for the anemometer? Is this practical? I can continue... what is the range of an OOK transmitter powered by just 3.3V? You may argue: Give up of OOK transmitters and change to Lora, they work with 3,3V and require low power! Require low power to receive, but for transmitting... forget those small batteries, when transmitting they can reach a consumption of 200mA. Ah, the solution - reduce the duty cycle and transmit only every 15 minutes (like some weather stations do).
The main question is, what you have to abdicate to reach the desired "low power"

Just another bit, with a future in mind... Me and another member of the developers team, are already using ultrasonic anemometers, they are "low power" devices, but "low power" here means several Watts at 12V. With a setup like this, forget about a system working just with batteries...

[mrazoun]

Hi Werk_AG, engolling,

yes you are right. The low low power Tx unit will bring some disadvantages or compromises, but can be usefull in many cases.
And there is very good idea of your system - you can combine data from more Tx units.
Will be not usefull for everybody, but somebody will be very hapy with it.

From technical point of view :
- with arduino mini pro it's possible to get mikro Amps quiscent current after easy changes. The firmware in Tx unit is short, not to often to download new one - can be done via FTDI adapter.
- RF via RFM69HW ?
- And what about idea to do in Tx unit sensor measurement and also some data aquisition and lower the transmit rate by this way ?



Finally, it can be battery powered in some cases. Or it will decrease dramaticaly power consumption and it will be much more easy to use solar power. I know, in Portugal there is enough sun. In our county there is ussually more then one week calm inversion weather in the winter time, without possibility to take any power from solar cells.

[engolling]

Since you have to design another TX board anyway it would be suitable to integrate a battery connector and solar charger directly and just directly implement a MCU. It can still be programmed with an Arduino bootloader.
You also can integrate a boost converter which is activated just for supplying the RF unit when transmitting.